Isight will not work.

So I took my notebook into Apple and asked them to find out why the iSight webcam was not working... They claimed that it was water damaged. I find that very hard to believe because, what are the odds that JUST the camera module would be damaged... Does anyone know the internals well? What is the likelihood of this being true? If it is true, is there potentially a re-solderable capacitor or something simple that I could replace?

1 Answer

Well, it is possible that water damage would have caused that because on the Unibody MBPs, the iSight cable is the same as the Bluetooth/AirPort cable and it goes from the logic board to the display.

It's likely that you've shorted out the connector where that cable attaches to the logic board. If you can, you might consider looking at that connector and the parts around it.

Here's an iFixit guide that will directly deal with that connector. It's very easy to find.

On a 13-inch MBP that I bought on eBay, the iSight, AirPort, and Bluetooth stopped working, and I suspect it was water damage. Anyway, I investigated and there were a couple of ferrite beads that had exploded below the connector. I would definitely look. If you spilled water on it at all, then that's absolutely and indisputably the cause of your problem.

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